Offaly camogie had to press restart and relaunch

“Sometimes you need to come down, have a reality check, and look at what is going wrong. We are slowly building Offaly camogie back up."

Thu, 07 Aug, 2025 - 06:44

Eoghan Cormican

The charm dangling at the bottom of Orlagh Phelan’s gold necklace is a map of Offaly. The necklace was a present from a Tipperary friend. The present was in recognition of her receiving the Offaly captaincy at the beginning of the year.

Phelan is a young captain. A very young captain at that. Recently turned 21, she was all of 20 years young when manager David Sullivan handed her the role for the 2025 season.

Being thrown in at the deep end is familiar work for the Naomh Bríd clubwoman, her senior championship debut at the age of 17 requiring the teenager to shadow and subdue then five-time Kilkenny All-Star Denise Gaule.

Vice-captains Amy Byrne and Mairead Teehan have rarely left Phelan’s side in helping her find voice and adjust to the captaincy title. It’s a role she’s growing in and slowly overcoming the few scary parts attached to the job.

“Not daunting, but you are like, I hope they are not going to turn on me now if I stand up and start giving out,” Phelan quips.

“In fairness, the girls have had so much respect for me as captain. They have really made my role easier. It is hard in that you are 20 and you are trying to tell a girl who is older than you, not what to do, but to come on, drive it on now. Overall, though, it has been such a good learning experience.”

Offaly camogie, on the watch of All-Ireland hurling winner Joachim Kelly, broke through when achieving back-to-back junior and intermediate final victories in 2009 and ‘10. Two years later they were present at Nowlan Park on All-Ireland senior semis afternoon.

The county’s rise was swift and spectacular. Camogie nobodies to next stop Croke Park. They continued to hold top-level company in the years after their heavy 2012 semi-final defeat to champions Wexford. The Faithful women reached quarter-finals in ‘13, ‘14, and ‘16. They should have exacted Wexford revenge in the first of those, Ursula Jacob denying successive semi-final appearances at the death.

The downturn came at the beginning of the current decade. They handed Cork a walkover in their opening game of the 2020 championship. Covid was not the reason behind the walkover.

In that campaign and the three after, Offaly would lose all 13 of their championship group games. A relegation play-off victory over Down saved them in 2021. They could not repeat the trick against the same opposition 24 months later.

They had to fall in order to pick themselves up. They needed to press restart and relaunch. The annual hidings at senior level had become harmful both to playing personnel and wider Offaly camogie picture.

“Sometimes you need to come down, have a reality check, and look at what is going wrong. We are slowly building Offaly camogie back up,” says the half-back and Mary Immaculate college student.

“When we lost the intermediate semi-final last year, we were probably saying, are we ever going to get out of intermediate, but going back down got us to reset, so it definitely was a learning experience for us. It has benefited us, and I hope it will again on Sunday.

“Everyone is talking about Offaly camogie again, which is fantastic. Offaly camogie has been spoken about for the wrong reasons for the last few years. It is good to see people are getting behind us and want to see us back up senior. Playing senior would be such an honour, that is every girl's dream.”

The return road to senior was shortened and made slightly less treacherous by the Camogie Association decision for 2025 to stop senior counties fielding second teams at intermediate level. Against that, mind, the decision to relegate two counties from senior last year, as opposed to the usual one, meant no guarantees for Offaly and Kerry, the pair who lost out narrowly to Cork and Kilkenny at the semi-final stage in 2024.

“It could have been an Offaly-Kerry final last year, but allowing us to pave our way at intermediate without any of the second teams being there gave you confidence. There was room for other teams too to come up and make their statement.

“The second teams are in training with their seniors so they are getting that bit more experience, so it was great for other teams to pave their way and get people talking about camogie in their county, as well, as opposed to just the main counties.”